OSgrid will reopen in 2027 after year-end reset

OSgrid, the oldest grid in OpenSim, isn’t going away after all — it will go offline at the end of the year for a reset and come back in 2027, OSgrid treasurer Lawrence Roberts confirmed to Hypergrid Business yesterday.

The grid announced last week that it would shut down after 19 years, blaming a malicious actor who flooded its servers with junk data.

“OSgrid, Inc. is not closing, despite the rumors that seem to keep popping up,” Roberts told Hypergrid Business. “The grid will go offline at the end of the year for a reset, but the organization is not going away.”

I’ve asked Roberts when in 2027 the grid will reopen and he said he’ll let me know as soon as they can.

“The assets have to be purged and the grid moved to a S3 cloud, so that will take a few days at least,” he said, referring to Amazon’s S3 cloud hosting. “And we are working on a lot of the improvements to the grid offline now, so as to have as little downtime as possible.”

Roberts, who is known in-world as Albertlr Landar, first broke the news on Sunday at a packed membership meeting at Hurliman Plaza, according to the transcript of the meeting chat that OSgrid posted on its wiki.

Hypergrid address: hg.osgrid.org:80:Hurliman Plaza

“I am here today to assure you that OSgrid is not going away,” Roberts said at the meeting. “We plan to return in 2027 and as soon as possible with a new and more secure grid.”

The grid will save user accounts, but not the full inventories of those accounts. The only regions that will automatically be carried over are the grid’s own plaza regions.

“Yes, all the plazas you now use will be back and the dances and parties, everything that you now enjoy,” Roberts said.

Meanwhile, the grid’s silent auction is still running on Zeffy, a free fundraising platform for nonprofits, with winners notified after the auction closes on November 30, Roberts said at the meeting. The items are on display on the ECHO 1 region.

Hypergrid address: hg.osgrid.org:80:ECHO 1

No more home-hosted regions

The biggest change is that regions run on residents’ own computers will no longer be able to connect directly to the grid, Roberts said.

“We have found that those particular connections are very insecure, and someone or some group has taken advantage of that to flood our servers with trash,” he said at the meeting.

Instead, OSgrid will allow trusted hosting companies to connect regions directly, Roberts told Hypergrid Business.

“An approved hoster is one that has completely identified themselves to us,” Roberts said at the meeting. “That has a reputation that they are reliable.”

Hosting companies already on the grid are “pretty much guaranteed to return if they wish,” he added.

For residents who want to keep running their own regions, Roberts suggested at the meeting that they rent a server from a provider like OVH, or use the free DreamGrid software from Outworldz.

The $1 monthly fee for each region beyond a resident’s first, announced shortly before the shutdown notice, is staying.

“The planned S3 migration, the requirement for $1 region fees, will need to continue and will be incorporated into the new version of OSgrid,” Roberts said at the meeting.

Home-hosted regions will still be able to visit through the hypergrid, and residents will still be able to get free homesteads on the grid’s plazas.

Accounts survive, assets don’t

Residents’ avatars will carry over to the new grid, Roberts said at the meeting.

“Yes, all accounts will survive,” he said.

But the asset database, which the attack filled with junk, will be wiped. That means residents need to save their own content.

“The problem is not that each person’s inventory is messed up by hackers, it’s that the total inventory is full of things that fill it up,” Roberts said. “So we cannot keep all that trash going forward. So a reset is needed to clean it up.”

Roberts urged residents to back up their inventories and regions before December 30. OSgrid president Dan Banner said at the meeting that grid services will turn off at midnight on December 31.

Region owners can export their own inventories and regions from their simulator consoles, and residents with hosted regions should ask their hosting company to do it for them, Roberts said. You can read more about how to save your stuff — and which grids will take it — in our previous story here.

Roberts also offered to personally back up the inventories of residents who don’t have regions of their own, on a first-come, first-served basis, if they email him at [email protected]. He said at the meeting that he would need the resident’s full avatar name and password.

Not everyone is convinced

Some residents at the meeting were skeptical of the shifting explanations.

“First the money goes missing, then there’s the ‘one dollar model,’ then the migration of assets, and now hackers — who is supposed to believe what at this point?” resident Crazy Onasis said at the meeting, according to the transcript.

Others objected to the end of home hosting, which has been the grid’s defining feature.

“A grid without self-hosting is not a grid,” resident Poppy Fields said in the meeting chat. “It’s a closed world.”

Meanwhile, some hosting companies aren’t waiting.

Swondo, which has hosted regions on OSgrid for almost 18 years — including the ring of regions around LBSA Plaza — is launching its own grid, Swondo World, in the next few days, co-owner Sylvia Sonoda told Hypergrid Business.

Hypergrid address: hg.swondo.com:8002

Almost all of Swondo’s renters plan to move with it, she said, and Sunday’s announcement doesn’t change that.

“When OSgrid comes back in 2027 we will give the choice to migrate back at no cost, and then we will simply do the migration in reverse,” Sonoda said.

Renters could also keep a region on one grid and an avatar on the other, she added.

“Personally, I am most happy that Albertlr Landar announced that my almost 18-year-old OSgrid account will survive,” she said.

For residents who don’t want to wait for the new OSgrid, here’s where OSgrid refugees can find land — some of it free.

There are also many communities that have made their home on OSgrid. Littlefield Grid, for example, recently finished their migration from being a private grid to being part of OSgrid. Now Littlefield will have to decide whether to move back to having their own grid, keep their regions on the new OSgrid, or find some other option.